


If I Never Turn, I Will Never Grow (Keep The Door Ajar When I’m Coming Home)

by thegrumblingirl



Series: Why Don't You Save Me? (1 Million Celebration) [5]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Albarca Baths, Daud is hurt but not sick as he is in DotO, Daud: self-sacrificing binch, Dishonored 2, Forgiveness, Gen, Grief, Low Chaos (Dishonored), M/M, Medical Procedures, Pre-Slash If You Squint, Redemption, Royal Conservatory mission, Timeline What Timeline, Unrequited... Something, call it admiration, difficult conversations, none of it given nor expected, nothing graphic but just in case that's a squick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 19:54:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20954015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/pseuds/thegrumblingirl
Summary: When she turned eighteen, Emily asked for the first time whether he regretted letting the Knife of Dunwall live. Letting him go, letting him fade into the shadows as he’d asked, the carved-up assassin who’d come to destroy their world.Corvo had a different answer for her then than the one he would have chosen now. He had just returned from the Royal Conservatory, that blood-and-witch-infested dungeon, and there were words beyond those that Delilah’s painted flesh had flung at him in outrage that haunted him.If Corvo regretted anything now, as he was on his way back to the sewers underneath Cyria Gardens, it was that he had never thrown Daud in a cell and cooked him until he told him everything he knew. Crucially, the witches' journals did not tell the whole story.“Is it done?” Foster asked when he appeared in front of her. She had never even flinched to see him Blink.“Take me back to the Wale.”





	If I Never Turn, I Will Never Grow (Keep The Door Ajar When I’m Coming Home)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amazinmango](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazinmango/gifts).

> To celebrate posting 1 MILLION words on this here AO3, I [gave away ten request slots](https://screwtheprinceimtakingthehorse.tumblr.com/post/187537485520/grumbles-1-million-give-away) (all gone now). This is #5, and it's for amazinmango!
> 
> Soundtrack: [Give Us A Little Love by Fallulah](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt6hIh2wuJ0).

When she turned eighteen, Emily asked for the first time whether he regretted letting the Knife of Dunwall live. Letting him go, letting him fade into the shadows as he’d asked, the carved-up assassin who’d come to destroy their world.

Corvo had a different answer for her then than the one he would have chosen now. He had just returned from the Royal Conservatory, that blood-and-witch-infested dungeon, and there were words beyond those that Delilah’s painted flesh had flung at him in outrage that haunted him. An audiograph in the quartermaster’s archive, half-concealed, half something Ashworth still refused to hide away completely.

_After Delilah fell to the assassin Daud, the coven scattered_.

And no five feet away, a painting by Delilah’s brush, of a young woman. A young woman that Corvo had immediately recognised as Meagan Foster’s younger, unmasked self. Unmasked — but certainly not unmarked. Corvo had found more. Old notes, diaries, journals, all salvaged from a place called Brigmore. Another familiar name.

How could he have been so blind? To think, that he had skulked through those ruins less than a year ago… witches’ bones, indeed. Had he walked across the remnants of one of Daud’s springrazors betwixt those shallow graves? Had some of the markings in the brick been hewn by his sword, fighting a coven Corvo had had no idea ever _existed_ until today? The witches — Delilah — had seen him coming, and had used Daud’s own lieutenant to try and eliminate the threat, only she had failed. And, somehow, escaped with her life; to invent herself anew. And now, she barely admitted to ‘knowing’ Ashworth, calling hers an ‘eclectic crowd,’ and managed to conceal the reason she had ever come to Dunwall to warn him even from the Heart. Sokolov’s investigations might have informed the timing, but Corvo did not believe for a moment that Foster — Lurk — had acted out of anything less than guilt.

The question was, who was her debtor: Corvo — or the Knife? For an assassin, which sat heavier in a heart — murder, or betrayal?

If Corvo regretted anything now, as he was on his way back to the sewers underneath Cyria Gardens, it was that he had never thrown Daud in a cell and cooked him until he told him everything he knew. Crucially, the witches' journals did not tell the whole story.

“Is it done?” Foster asked when he appeared in front of her. She had never even flinched to see him Blink.

“Take me back to the Wale.”

She did not comment on his lack of manners. Perhaps she was too eager to leave Ashworth — and her past — behind her.

But not yet.

*

On the Dreadful Wale, Corvo had not made two steps into the main room, Foster ahead of him at the table to light her pipe, when he demanded: “What reason did Daud have to kill Delilah fifteen years ago?”

Foster stilled. Her back remained to Corvo.

“Talk to me, _Billie_. Or I’ll finish this journey on my own. Without you — or Anton, if he knew and kept it from me.” Corvo idly wondered whether she’d think he wished to undo his act of clemency at Rudshore. He wondered whether _he_ believed it enough, in that moment. Perhaps he did. Perhaps too well.

She turned, cold fury in her eye.

“Anton doesn’t know anything,” she hissed. She did not bother denying it.

Corvo stepped forward, sat down in the chair by the door, and put his dusty boots up on the table.

“Prove it.”

*

Whether Lurk took the threat seriously or not, it proved effective.

She unlocked the door to her cabin, with her key to the lock Corvo had considered picking a hundred times during their voyage from Gristol to Karnaca, and retrieved a small chest. She set it down, and on top, a worn leather mask. A whaler’s mask. The lenses reflecting the light and making those hollow depths as impenetrable as the Ocean.

“I am Billie Lurk. And if you hadn’t pushed, I might have told you, at the end of all this.” She stood, tall and tense but unbowed, and Corvo couldn’t see whether her hand was shaking. “I can only imagine what it is you found at the Conservatory, but if it’s that question that interests you the most…”

She opened the chest and revealed an audiograph player. Aside from that, there were clothes — her Whaler uniform — and bonecharms and books, notes, her belt, the leather stiff and breaking from disuse… and her Whaler blade. Corvo would recognise that pattern anywhere.

From one of the books, she withdrew an audiograph card.

“Are you sure you want to know?”

He only looked up at her. She shrugged. She inserted the card.

_No-one will ever know what it took, to save Emily Kaldwin from a living death._

Corvo’s stomach filled with lead. He had heard that voice only once in his life, that day in the Flooded District. The day he’d come to unhinge Corvo’s life, Daud had been completely silent. Not even a grunt of effort had escaped him as —

Corvo pulled himself back to the present.

_— and the rest is Void._

Click.

“He recorded this the day before you arrived at Rudshore, half-dead from poison courtesy of your Loyalist friends,” Lurk said quietly. “He was waiting for you.”

“You weren’t there that day,” Corvo recalled. There’d been only one dressed in red — the Master himself.

“This is a copy,” she said. “Thomas. He sent it to me.” In her eye, there may have been gratitude that Corvo had let him live, too; him and the rest of that miserable band of brothers.

In a fair show of, ‘You show me yours, I show you mine,’ Corvo searched his pockets for the card he’d taken from the Conservatory archive.

When it was done, Lurk’s expression seemed to be cast of stone.

“What happened between them?” Corvo asked her. “And how can Daud claim to have saved my daughter from the same witch who now sullies her throne?”

It took an hour, and at the end Corvo was sure that what Lurk had told him was far from everything. Her recollections of Daud and her recruitment had come very easy — but her speech halted when she arrived at Delilah. Ashworth, the witches. The Empress… Daud’s weakness. Her opportunity, her chance. Her failure in ambition. For all she’d done, she was not _that_ cold-blooded, her actions seemed to say, and yet Corvo knew how she had reached that point. Through Jessamine’s death, and Daud’s regret of choices he had made willingly.

Regret that _the Outsider_ had used to set him on a witch’s trail like a dog. And he’d followed — through Timsh, through Rothwild, through Coldridge Prison, Drapers Ward, and the Hatters all in one. Had followed until he’d understood what Lurk had known all along, what Delilah had been planning: Emily’s slow, painful death, trapped inside the Void, trapped inside a painting of herself, while Delilah walked the earth through her eyes.

“That is what Daud saved her from,” Lurk said, her tale not complete, but at an end — for now.

“What did he do to Delilah?”

“Everyone thought that he’d killed her. He never told anyone how.”

“Thomas?”

Lurk nodded.

“Your only source?”

“I get letters sometimes. Finnick, Kat…”

“Fleet? Escobar?” Corvo pressed.

Her eye snapped up. “What have you done to them?”

Ah. So she’d known they’d remained in Dunwall. And she hadn't heard from them in a while.

“Escobar works for me now,” Corvo returned and savagely enjoyed the sickness in her gaze. “Fleet is dead.”

Lurk clenched her fist.

“Not by my hand.” He did not care whether she believed him now. They had no time for this. “What did Daud _do_?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know.”

Corvo leaned back further in his chair.

“Then we’ll have to find him, won’t we?”

*

Lurk had, in her words, ‘no idea where the old man is,’ but it took Corvo less than half an hour of talking in circles to get her to admit that she had been _looking_. Since Addermire.

“Keep searching, then,” Corvo told her. “We need him.”

“We?”

“Don’t you have things you want to say to him?”

“Are words the only thing _you_ have in mind?”

“We’ll see.” He did not aim to be reassuring.

*

It wasn’t until after the venture into the Dust District and Aramis Stilton’s home — and tampering with time seemingly at the Outsider’s behest, which worried Corvo for reasons both vague and sharply suspicious — that Lurk came to him with news.

(He still called her Meagan, so as not to tip off Sokolov. It had been her only condition. She’d figure out what to tell him — the truth, or which part of it — when they found Daud and brought him back with them.)

“I have a lead,” she said. “And if it’s this soon, then I think it’s safe to say he _let_ me find him.”

“Why?”

“Because if I’m right… he’s in trouble.”

*

Corvo had been to Upper Cyria and Cyria Gardens only a few times after becoming a soldier of the Guard, and he had never seen the Albarca Baths when they were still up and running. These days, they were a run-down shithole; and the crowd they attracted certainly looked the part.

“This is a terrible idea,” Lurk complained, watching as Corvo emptied the safe of a man who appeared to be the boxing club’s bookkeeper. “And how did you know the combination? You didn’t even look around.”

Of course she’d spotted the books eventually, but Corvo had barely spared the rest of the room a glance before making a beeline for the safe by the door.

“It’s always 4-5-1 — unless your name is Galvani. And sometimes, even then,” Corvo responded, weighing the umber statue in his hand. It was just about light enough to justifiably go in the pack on his belt.

“No, but that's because then you’re just a regular idiot,” Lurk agreed, and Corvo almost smirked. She’d become even more acerbic ever since she had come clean about her past. All in all, however, Foster and Lurk shared the same foul, pragmatic attitude. Corvo could work with either just fine.

It was her former boss that he worried about. If he really was in trouble, there was no telling the state he was in. And owing to that state, he would very likely react more — or rather less — amenably to being hauled out of a very likely miserably dangerous situation by none other than the errant Royal Protector and his former right hand.

Corvo pushed aside his concerns. Lurk had just as much reason to be cautious, and more to fear the old Knife’s wrath. And she was still here.

She was also currently rummaging around among the papers on the desk.

“If the Eyeless really are fighting with black magic… and if they have a contender with abilities no-one else can match…”

“You think it’s Daud?” Corvo pocketed the last of the coin after counting it. (Normally he wouldn’t take the time, but it paid to be thorough while it was quiet and one had the chance. There were repairs to make on the Wale if they wanted to make the journey back to Dunwall without sinking.) He turned back to where Lurk was standing, looking at the blackboard propped up against the wall behind the desk, counting the odds.

“There has to be a reason he didn’t send you a warning himself. If he wasn’t around to find out about Delilah’s return or to hear about the Coup, then where was he? Even if the Guard hasn’t found you yet, your presence here has not gone unnoticed by everyone else.”

“We can stand here and speculate, or we could go and ask him,” Corvo jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.

“Hey, we could ask him,” Lurk returned sarcastically.

*

The Albarca Baths were an imposing structure, and surely had once been beautiful to look at. The white sandstone reminded Corvo of Addermire and the Dust District.

As far as their investigations went, the Eyeless had no friend in Delilah; but still a few witches, current or former, were milling about outside. Casting Ashworth out of the Void had surely done them no favours, Corvo thought. He knew not all fo them had been in on it to murder and pillage. Chances were that most of them had merely tried to escape situations one more miserable than the last. It could be difficult to say no, when life was like that. He had left enough escape routes open for them ere the Guard and the Abbey descended on the Conservatory. Still, he doubted all of them had made it out; and not all of those he pitied. Ashworth, he surely didn’t.

He watched the young woman pacing up and down in front of the steps leading up. She was no longer bound to the Void, he could see it in her skin. Question was, would she attack him, or cut and run? Best not to put it to the test.

Lurk was free to go inside as a patron. She would find a way and open a window for him. Any minute now.

There. Corvo reached into the Void and pulled himself through.

“They have him downstairs,” she whispered. She sounded… vulnerable. “In the pit. It has to be another of Jindosh’s machines. I’ll bet Ashworth made the plans for him to build it.”

Corvo had seen plans for a second apparatus at the curator’s office, but had not been able to read them properly, or discern its purpose.

“What does that mean?”

“They’re cutting him off. He can’t get away if he can’t get to the Void. It’s like the Music, just… without the noise. I haven’t carried the Arcane Bond in fifteen years, and even I can still feel it, somehow.”

Corvo suppressed a shudder. “How do we get him out?”

“There’s a key. The owner, woman called Lee. She has it.”

Corvo drew his sword from his belt and unfolded the blade. “Lead the way.”

*

They worked their way through the building slowly, methodically. Corvo was pleased but hardly surprised to see that Lurk had lost none of her instincts in situations like this. She kept her cool even when the wolfhounds grew restless in their cage, catching an unfamiliar scent, and Corvo had barely turned before she’d choked out the toothless witch coming up behind them in the boiler room.

“Careful,” she mouthed, and Corvo wanted to warn her not to treat him like a Novice when a harsh voice from next door interrupted them.

“The Brute’s got another match tonight. Make sure to turn the Suppressor off and on again a few times before you do let him out. Keeps him hungry, to have a taste and then it’s taken away.”

Corvo, against his better judgement, clenched his fist. Bastards. No matter who Daud was, had been, and what he might rightly deserve, this was _torture_.

Corvo knew it well.

“Let’s get him out.”

According to the scoreboard, the Black Magic Brute had never lost a fight.

*

One by one, they knocked out everyone except for those down in the arena. Corvo had counted them and knew he couldn’t manage them all on his own. His ability in bending time had never extended _that_ far. Daud would have to lend a hand, if he was able.

Belatedly, Corvo recognised Sokolov’s portrait of the Outsider, hoisted up above the fighting ring as he crept along the beam. Was He watching over Daud? Or was He watching in amusement? Corvo handed Lurk the key. Below them, Daud seemed dazed and incoherent. He had no idea they were here. They could leave him, and he would never know. Corvo looked down to where Lurk had reached the console, and nodded. Lurk turned the key, and slammed the switch. The hum, the golden arcing lights — abruptly they were gone. Corvo tore a hole into the world, and stepped inside.

On the other side, inside the grey, Daud was waiting for him.

“Corvo.”

Then, he transversed. They went to work.

*

Panting, they reappeared before Lurk, who watched as the last of the Eyeless dropped, unconscious, to the ground.

“Daud,” she said.

“Billie.”

“Now that we remember all our names,” Corvo cut in — but he got no further as, without warning, Daud stumbled. Gripping his torso, he coughed. Corvo and Lurk immediately went to steady him, but he moved away, waving them off.

“Just a rib or two. Cracked last week,” he rasped.

“You need a surgeon,” Lurk exclaimed.

“He’s been. Says I’ll live.” Another cough. It seemed to rattle.

“Not for much longer,” Corvo said. “We need to go. The Guard is planning a raid, tonight. We delayed their back-up, but we should still hurry.” Seeing the way Daud held himself, Corvo offered his arm. “I’ll Blink.”

“No,” Daud sneered. But his eyes were tight with pain.

“You can die out there or let me help you. Your choice,” Corvo said bluntly.

Daud took another laboured breath. Then, evading Lurk’s piercing gaze, he set his hand on Corvo’s arm.

“Blink me into a wall and you’ll never walk again.”

“Save your breath.”

*

Progress out of the Baths was slow if only for the fact that so many windows were boarded up or locked that Corvo had to put them on the ground at one point or another, and none of them were keen on Daud being recognised. Daud did still manage to hold his peace until they had successfully bypassed the late-arriving patrol, who were now scratching their heads as to their scouts’ whereabouts.

“I hope you hid them well enough,” he grated, indubitably peeved at having to sling his arm over Corvo’s shoulder to keep upright as they walked.

“Do I look like a rookie?” Corvo shot back, dragging him along none too gently.

“You used to hide Watch officers in _dumpsters_,” Daud accused, cursing when he fell out of step and his hip bumped against Corvo’s. Corvo was about to retort when Lurk put a stop to their argument (or what might have become one).

“Quit your bickering,” she commanded sullenly. Pushing past them, she pointed to where they’d left the railway car they had borrowed from Aquintila Repair Station. “And get moving.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Corvo said, darkly teasing.

Daud said nothing. At least he was still going.

When they arrived at the ship, Daud stared up at the hull for a solid minute, muttering to himself, before he turned to Lurk and barked: “For the love of fuck, Billie.”

Lurk said nothing.

Corvo looked up at the ship, and his eye caught on the name. Not… a spelling error by a harried (or drunk, or both) harbour master, then? He squinted as Lurk brought the skiff alongside. He had a feeling asking wouldn’t end well.

In the end, it took surprisingly long for Daud to collapse, along with his lungs. At least long enough for him to recognised Sokolov and vow to die before he’d let ‘that old codger’ touch him. Corvo privately thought that everyone on this boat could stand to call each other ‘old’ a little less. They were none of them young anymore.

However, his thoughts were eclipsed by worry when Daud went even paler and started swaying. Then, he coughed up blood.

*

To Sokolov’s credit, he had sent for Hypatia prior to their departure from Old Batista, and she had accompanied them on this mission without asking too many questions. Together, they had Lurk and Corvo act as nurses while they performed surgery on Daud right in the empty cabin, badly lit for an operating theatre and far from sterile. But they managed, between them, and Corvo did his best not to gag when he watched the fluid drain from Daud’s torso. Ten minutes later, and the Knife of Dunwall would have drowned in his own blood. Some would have called that a fitting ending.

But he lived, and so it was up to them to ensure he stayed that way. Under the influence of poppy, he stayed asleep for a day or so before Hypatia weaned him off, to see whether he _would_ wake. He did, and when it was to the sight of Corvo dabbing ointment onto his cracking and infected knuckles, Corvo supposed Daud rather wished he had died.

“Leave me be, Attano,” Daud whispered, his usually so deep voice reduced to a shred of itself.

“And have Hypatia skin _my_ hide?” Corvo neglected to mention that she had already practically stuck her hand into Daud’s chest cavity to save him; so really there was no conceivable end to Hypatia’s determination.

Daud said nothing, conforming to type, and Corvo completed his task in silence.

“I’ll let Hypatia know you are awake.”

Daud grunted.

*

The same procedure repeated itself the next day.

“Don’t you have better things to do?”

“The Duke is not expected to return from Dunwall until next week,” Corvo told him.

Daud watched him for a moment. “You going to kill him?”

“If I have to.”

“Hmm. Just don’t ask Lurk. She might have an answer for you that you won’t like.”

Corvo continued his work. “She’s not been to see you, has she.”

“Why would she? It can’t have been her idea to come get me.”

“Perhaps not yet.” Corvo debated whether to tell him that she’d been looking.

“How did you find out?” There was no question as to what Daud meant.

“Ashworth has a sentimental side to her.” He paused. “As does Lurk. She has a copy of the audiograph you recorded before… before I arrived.”

Daud scoffed, but it was unmistakably fond. “Her, and Thomas… so different, and yet two peas in a pod. There’s a reason I chose either to be my second, but they both need to beware of nostalgia.”

“And what of your nostalgia,” Corvo began, immediately feeling Daud’s gaze on him sharpen. “Any old habits still lingering?”

Daud’s lips settled into a thin line, and his gaze was hard.

“I never killed again, _Lord Protector_.” He sighed. “Not until Albarca. Crucially, not Delilah, fifteen years ago.”

As Corvo was watching him, done with the ointment and Daud’s hands safely tucked away, he remembered Emily’s question. “Lurk says you have regrets as sharp as hers, and wounds that will never heal.”

Daud averted his eyes.

“I don’t regret letting you go. It was the right choice.” To his own surprise, Corvo found conviction in the words.

Daud pursed his lips. “Glad to hear that the Attano-Kaldwin line will continue to provide the Empire with the arbiter of what is right.” He looked back at Corvo. “Seeing as you’ve lost another empress.”

Corvo gritted his teeth. “And where were you to warn us?”

“In that pit,” Daud said pleasantly. “For two years.”

“Why didn’t you escape? You would have had plenty of opportunity—”

“Because I put myself there.”

Corvo stared at him.

“I had a visit, from our mutual black-eyed bastard friend. I know I don’t seem the type to blindly trust anything that cryptic shit says,” Daud said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “But he impressed upon me the value of patience.”

“Unless what?” Corvo prompted.

“Unless I wanted both you and Emily to die if I returned to Dunwall.” Daud shrugged, a strange gesture given that he was lying down, his chest covered in bandages, his body littered with scars, some so unmistakably jagged Corvo could say how he had sustained the wounds that caused them. “It was a risk I could not take. Besides… the Eyeless had other secrets worth discovering.”

“Did the Outsider tell you that Delilah had returned? Did you know?”

Daud shook his head. “He only led me to Jindosh and Ashworth. I suspected that there was a coven involved, but our friend neglected to mention that I was on this particular witch’s shortlist.”

“Meaning?”

“Delilah knew I’d come for her, just like last time, if I found out. My mistake was underestimating Ashworth. I expected infiltration, not incarceration.”

“You couldn’t have sent a letter?” Corvo’s question lacked any true accusation. Fifteen years had put Daud’s role into perspective. Corvo had stopped — and interrogated, and executed — plenty of assassins since. None had been like him.

Daud drew a quizzical brow. “Because the last time you travelled the Isles at the behest of Her Majesty was so successful.”

“Daud,” Corvo growled. If the assassin was trying to goad him into stabbing him, he wasn’t doing a bad job of it, albeit his tactic was a tad obvious.

“Bodyguard,” Daud returned in a drawl. “Seeing as we are both alive and your daughter in dire need of saving, again, I daresay this is the preferred outcome.”

“Otherwise, you would have to admit the Outsider manipulated you for his own ends and into doing his bidding,” Corvo shot back.

Daud smiled thinly. “Oh, I know he did. He wants something, but not from either of us, or even Emily.”

“Then who?”

Daud looked at the ceiling, his gaze suddenly far-away. “He wants Billie. And I don’t yet understand what for.”

Corvo recognised the worry on his face; knew it like his own. He felt it every time Emily went out onto the rooftops at night. It was the worry of a father whose child had long outgrown him.

*

The next day, Corvo helped Daud limp into the main room for supper. Daud loathed needing the assistance, but was not stupid enough not to accept the offer while it was being given.

“Put aside your differences, old man?” Lurk asked sardonically.

“You’ll have to ask him,” said Daud, followed by a grunt as he lowered himself into a chair.

Corvo said nothing as he sat down on the other side.

“When is Stilton coming?”

*

As the days continued, so did the building tension on board.

It was ironic, Corvo thought, that Daud ought to be less afraid of him than Lurk. He even kept him company the day before the Wale would take them out into the Bay, towards Abele Point.

“Why wait for Lurk, down in that pit?” It was the one question Corvo could not fathom an answer to.

Daud eyed the cigarette in Corvo’s hand with a rough sort of longing. Then, he said: “I was never afraid of death.”

Corvo passed him a glance. “Not even of my blade at your throat?”

“Wasn’t a gamble I was expecting to win.”

“And yet, one you still took.”

Daud looked out on the water. He remained silent.

Another question without an answer; and Corvo wondered whether that wasn’t more revealing.

Corvo had been so focused on the mission, so bent on finding Daud and extracting from him what he knew about Delilah that he had not even considered what it would _feel_ like; and once faced with it had forbidden himself the question. To see him again after all that time, to see the man living who had been so instrumental and yet, in the end, expendable in the near-collapse of the Empire. He had let him go half to punish him, it was true: Daud seemed the only one, of all of them, to regret his part in Jessamine's death and the chaos that followed. The Loyalists may have, at the end, had Havelock's poison not cut short their remorse. Corvo had thought, near the end of his tether, that Daud deserved to live with that regret. And yet, the Knife had called it mercy.

In his quest to save Emily, then and now, Corvo's own sentiments did not matter. Fifteen years ago, he'd wanted vengeance, wanted blood, but had curbed his hatred for the sake of Emily's legacy. The Outsider had asked him, this time, whether he could do it again. Standing at the railing next to the man who had carved up Dunwall like a carcass for coin and sport not so long ago (and yet it felt like a lifetime), he supposed the Void god had his answer.

Daud had needed treatment, and still did; more than two people alone could provide every hour of the day, and so Corvo had done his part. And as Daud sought refuge with him, of all people, from the tension between him and Lurk — his daughter, even for the lack of blood — and their history of disappointed reverence, Corvo thought he might see why. Daud had received his sentence, from him, fifteen years ago. It had been to live, and never to return. The way Lurk looked at him now, turmoil in her dark eyes? It was a judgment being written.

Surely Daud knew better than to mistake his equanimity for forgiveness.

His memory of Daud had changed over the years, as all memories did. Every time he stopped an assassination plot from afar or with his own blade, every time he sent agents out to die, something shifted and settled and his recollection of Daud altered. The scar, his cold eyes, that cruel mouth. The one who had got through, the one who haunted his dreams. At some point, even ghosts became companions.

The first time Corvo asked himself, when expecting an attack on the Tower from the remaining Regenters, 'What would the Knife of Dunwall do?' he knew he had gained another.

There was one companion who had been returned to him, through all this.

_The last thing the Empress felt was his blade. It is strange to be near him after so long. He has changed._

The last was said with quiet surprise.

_Perhaps just as much as you._

There was a sadness now that never left her voice. Still, it was the sweetest thing he would ever hear ere he died.

Except, perhaps, Delilah's screams for mercy.

"Blood magic is not to be trifled with," said Daud without prelude, breaking into Corvo's thoughts. "Ashworth's effigies are even more dangerous than Copperspoon's damned paintings. If Delilah has put her _spirit_ inside one of them, and it's managed to contain all she is, all she wants, all she _can be_ for three years... there's no giving up what's inside easily. Ashworth loves her, even if Delilah has no use for her anymore now. She _made_ that thing to hold her lover's soul."

For a moment, Corvo did not rightly know what to say. Then, he remembered who he was talking to.

"What do you know about love?"

"Nothing," Daud grated. "I'm the wolf at your door, Corvo. I'll never be anything else. But perhaps it's time for the wolf to cry witch."

"You never returned to Dunwall," Corvo said.

"I kept my end of the bargain," Daud returned. If he was confused at the turn of conversation, he didn't show it. At least he wasn't fool enough to call it a _promise_.

“And now you’re telling me to be _careful_,” said Corvo.

“I’ve no wish to see my work squandered,” returned Daud.

Corvo shook his head, but replied nothing.

“Or to see my hopes die with you,” Daud added, surprising him.

“What hopes?” Corvo asked, wary.

“I know I can’t return to Dunwall,” Daud answered. “And I’m not sure I want to. But one of us has to. I’d rather it be you, Corvo. Not for my sake, for yours.”

“Not for the Empire?” Corvo shot back sarcastically.

The look Daud gave him then was open and raw. “I couldn’t give a fig about the Empire, all four corners of it. The old Duke never should have sold you out; but you went and you did what I never managed. You found something worth fighting for.” He turned away. “I almost destroyed it all once. I won’t see you lose it now.”

For a long moment, Corvo stared at him. Before he could say anything, however, the door to the stairs opened.

“Hypatia says it’s time to change the dressing on the wound, old man.” Lurk.

Corvo watched as Daud briefly closed his eyes, then drew up and steeled himself before he turned to face her.

“Coming.”

Lurk cast one glance at Corvo, then looked back to Daud. She nodded, and turned on her heel to go back down.

Daud left without looking back. Corvo let him go.

**Author's Note:**

> prompt was: ""you got two choices: let me carry you, or die out here" knifecrow?? am i too late EEEEEH"


End file.
